Why is it nasty to point out the ridiculousness of voting the Olive Garden as best local Italian restaurant or voting the Outback as best steakhouse? In no other city would such mediocrity rule. You do realize people in other parts of the country laugh at us because of this?

My friends in NYC and Boston do think “the Best of” here is hilarious, and I send them the results every year so they can have a good laugh (they’re Albany natives). But you’re probably right, Steve. We’re no more or less provincial than any other medium size urban/suburban area.

Funny, I was just in NYC last weekend and while we were walking to our restaurant for dinner (Steak Frites on E. 16th St. – which was excellent by the way), we passed an Olive Garden on 6th Ave. and yes ! there was a line out the door on a Friday night. Go figure. So sad…

Bill, you are not saddened or at least dismayed by the fact that Coors sells $5 billion a year worth of beer — 10 times more, by revenue, than Sam Adams? Or that Sam Adams sells 20 times more beer, by volume, than Dogfish Head?

I think I’m falling in love with Strick9. If Olive Garden inspires votes, it just demonstrates the dumbing-down of the American palate, in living color. Something tells me Strick9 and I should run off to Paris, or at least New York City for a long weekend. Never believe in the wisdom of the majority when it comes to art.

I think you all are giving a lot of the voters too much credit. The reason that Olive Garden and Starbucks win is shear numbers…Olive Garden puts more people through their (mediocre) dining room in one night than most local Italian restaurants do in a week, or a month…. There are simply a lot more potential votes. It really has nothing to do with people thinking they (Olive Garden) are better than a locally owned “real” Italian restaurant where the owner actually cares about his customers and his food…it is just numbers. @ Bill- you are 100% correct, people SHOULD eat what they want, just like they should drink the wine that they like…not what someone else tells them is “good”. If a large pile of never-ending greasy garlic breadsticks, a massive plastic bowl of brown iceberg lettuce coated with sulfite preservative rinse and white Zinfandel from a chain owned by a massive company where all of the money you spend goes out of state are your favorites…who are we to judge. numbers….

Last year I decided to stop complaining about the results of the Times Union Reader’s Poll and decided to try and do something about it.

I called it the FUSSYlittleBALLOT.

The idea was that all of the little places we love split the vote and major chains like Subway come in and take the prize for Best Sandwich. It killed me too. So I sat down with a small cadre of close advisers and came up with a slate of businesses for each of the categories.

Then I asked people to vote for the slate. Your favorite sandwich place may not be Andy’s, it might be Perreca’s or Rangonese. But if enough people ignored their own favorite and decided to vote for each business on the FUSSYlittleBALLOT, we might be able to defeat the likes of Subway and The Olive Garden.

Please, please, please do not cast your votes tomorrow.

The FUSSYlittleBALLOT 2.0 will be up on Monday. For the sake of the greater good, I ask you all for your sincere consideration of the slate. Because people are laughing at us, and I for one would like them to stop.

It doesn’t bother me that Olive Garden and Outback win, it is just that the name of the whole contest is wrong. It should be called “Most Popular Of” not “Best Of”. For years the best selling car in America was the Ford Taurus, that didn’t make it the best car, just the most popular. TU just needs to change the name.

Olive Garden and Coors typically win/outsell their competition not because they’re better but because they’re cheaper. The average person would rather spend $30 for a dinner at the Olive garden than $60 at a quality Italian restaurant. You can’t really take these results as “best of”, should be “more likely to frequent”.

Bill in Upstate – I found it sad that there was a line at the Olive Garden in NYC because NY is such a great restaurant city. Not just for people who want to spend a ton of money dining out but for people on a budget, too. We had five people from Naples, Italy with us, some of whom were students and didn’t have a lot of money to spend, yet everybody found great food at whatever price point they could afford at non chain restaurants, and it was a blast. Plus we got to support local NYC restaurant owners. The Neopolitans didn’t understand the concept of Olive Garden at all when we tried to explain it, and were frankly horrified when we showed them a menu of the food there online.

While I really don’t begrudge anyone if they want to dine at Olive Garden, etc., (it’s a free country, after all) I would hope that people see it is not really a “cheap” or affordable place to dine when inexpensive, well-cooked Italian and Italian-American food is easy to find at any number of local, non-chain restaurants. Plus, I really want to see a deserving local restaurant get voted “Best Of” and not just some chain. Who doesn’t want that? Maybe TU can change it to “Most Popular” as opposed to “Best of”.

Yes, there are people in every city on the planet who must love the Olive Garden. It says more about the people than it does about the Olive Garden, though. Anti-chain? Is anyone pro-chain? I mean, we are on a food lover’s blog here. The need for chains has to do with a perceived catering to a budget, children, or speed. I don’t think they even bill themselves as “cuisine.” I suppose we have to ferret out the best chains, to be fair, but really, Other, we can all do better than the Olive Garden for the same price. Thanks for the gentle let down, S9.

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